Football: Pilot Point goes 97 yards on final drive, tops Sanger

Sanger junior running back Derek Shelby (24) attempts to drive the ball down field while being tackled by Pilot Point senior, Austin Rider (35), during the first quarter, Friday, September 14, 2012, at Massey Stadium in Pilot Point.

PILOT POINT — The Pilot Point Bearcats
went 97 yards in nine plays in the final four minutes of Friday night’s game to
score a 14-7 win over neighbor Sanger and remain unbeaten at 3-0.

Sanger, which led from the game’s
seventh minute until its 31st and next to last, fell to 0-3.

Junior quarterback Travis Garrett, who
scored the game winner on a twisting 15-yard run with 1 minute, 9 seconds left
on the clock, had plenty of help on the final drive but none bigger than from
running back Tristan Jurecka.

The tough-running junior picked up
Garrett’s wayward pitchout on third-and-15 and managed to bang his way down the
Indians’ sideline for 13 yards. Then Jurecka, who led all rushers with 124
yards on 17 carries, plowed up the middle to pick up the necessary yards on a
fourth-and-1 play before Garrett worked his go-ahead magic.

Senior wideout Mason Richey, who caught
four Garrett passes for 68 yards, had a 29-yard catch to key the 97-yard drive.

Sanger, led by junior running back Derek
Shelby (117 yards on 28 carries), had its best second-half chance to pad its
tenuous 7-6 halftime lead when it moved to the Pilot Point 31-yard line with
less than five minutes remaining. The Indians’ drive stalled there, but when
Ted Wisdom’s punt went out of bounds at the Bearcats’ 3 with 3:42 left,
Sanger’s chances to break into the win column were looking pretty good.

Twice in the first half, Pilot Point’s
defense stopped the Indians in the red zone.

Sanger took the opening kickoff and
marched 57 yards in eight plays, with Shelby doing most of the marching. But
Bearcats Jonah Fritz and Beau Ewton teamed to stop Sanger QB Brandon Mann a
yard shy of paydirt on a fourth-down sweep.

Late in the first half, Sanger began at
the Pilot Point 49 after a 15-yard penalty on the Bearcats, and the visitors
moved inside the Pilot Point 20, with the big play a 20-yard pass from Mann to
Brennan Bloom. But on fourth down, John Groff led Pilot Point in stopping
Shelby a yard short of a new set of downs.

Each team took advantage of the other’s
mistakes to score in the first half.

The Indians needed to go only 29 yards
for their touchdown after a Bearcats fumble, with Mann hooking up with Devin
Teeters for an 11-yard score. Kyle Johnson’s PAT made it 7-0 with 4:17 left in
the first quarter.

The Bearcats countered in the second
quarter after a 12-yard Sanger punt set up a drive just 30 yards from the end
zone. The big play was Jurecka’s 11-yard run, but Garrett got the touchdown
with a 5-yard keeper around left end.

A missed extra point, a Pilot Point
bugaboo so far this season, left Sanger up 7-6 with 8:23 left in the first
half.

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